초록/요약

This research explores the changes of media structure and media policy of the Qing government in the late Qing in the eve of the 1911 Revolution and its implication for the outbreak of the 1911 Revolution. This study sees the media as important means of political communication and a significant institution in the public realm and examines the Qing government’s implementation of media policy in the context of changing media structure in the late Qing. In the well-established field of the history of book in the study of the French Revolution, the role of books, pamphlets, and newspapers in the spread of enlightenment, and the making of the French Revolution has been a focal point of the study. However, in understanding the 1911 revolution, the role of the media is often neglected, and the media is assumed to have played lesser role in the making of the revolution in China, because of the general perception that the media in China is underdeveloped and the authoritarian Qing court was effective in controlling the press. In response to the rise of political press and changing media structure, the Qing government published its own newspapers as organs of government offices in order to dominate in competition with media published by reformist and revolutionaries in the public realm. Further, Qing government also legislated and implemented new press law in order to exert media control effectively. However, due to the existence of concession areas with extraterritoriality, and smuggling of radical press from abroad through transnational networks, the Qing government was not so successful in controlling radical press. This undermined the Qing government’s dominance in the public realm in terms of representing political affairs and politics through media in competition with radical reformists and revolutionaries and weakened the state authority and legitimacy in the eve of the 1911 Revolution.